IT Enabled Solutions

Agri Value Chain

Around 56% of India's 1.2 billion population is dependent on the Agricultural and Food Value Chain (Agricultural Inputs, Agriculture, Agricultural Output Supply Chain, Output Processing, Retailing and Sales) and contributes to more than 30% of India's GDP. Food and Grocery Retail industry itself is over US$ 325 Billion. This makes Agriculture Value Chain the biggest contributor to the Indian economy.

Despite the government's predominant focus on the issues pertaining to the farming community, key grain yields are less than half compared to China. Multiple factors contribute to low yields one of the major being fertilizer imbalance. Lack of right information (e.g. weather) at the right time, antiquated agronomy practices also contribute to low yields. Lack of proper output infrastructure causing output losses, pricing data and inordinate power of middle men in output procurement areas are some of the aspects that have resulted in stagnating supplies and low farmer earnings that are posing a serious food security challenge.

Consistent Best Practice Development and Dissemination, Communication and Information Technology development and deployment across the value chain can significantly contribute to agricultural value chain growth. The potential market size of this segment is estimated at @ Rs 70,000 Crores taking a conservative penetration level of 5% of the GDP contributed by agri sector which is around Rs 14,17,300 Crs. Therefore, this segment offers a huge opportunity for any company.

Ikisan is perhaps the only entity in the country that is specialized across the agri-value chain with the specific mandate and capabilities to harness the power of information technology to address the key problem areas plaguing the Indian agriculture value chain.

The key services offered by Ikisan are

System study, design and development of IT enabled solutions and services for the agri sector

Execution of rural IT enabled projects on BOT/BOOT/Turnkey basis

Development, Customization and Deployment of Ikisan's IPR protected software applications

Providing support services and best management practices for augmenting the marketing development efforts of the groups agricultural input companies (NFCL and NACL).

Development and Dissemination of best practice and information though a unique multi lingual knowledge website for the agri sector.

Key ITES Partners

Some of the key customers/partners that benefit significantly from our work include are Electronics Corporation of India Ltd, State Agricultural Marketing Boards, Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, Tamil Nadu, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Motorola Mobility (GOOGLE) etc

Market Support

As highlighted earlier Ikisan provides significant support to the market development and marketing efforts of NFCL and NACL by providing best practices and information across the agriculture value chain - weather, soil, seeds, fertilizers, water, pesticides, output prices etc. that have enabled the companies to develop deep customer relationships and in turn enable them to grow above market growth rates.

Recently example in fertilizers includes the development of Customized Fertilizer Grades (for NFCL across India that are crop and location specific have not only reduced the current consumption of fertilizers of farmers but have significantly enhanced crop yields and farmer incomes) that are expected to add significant revenues to the company.

Developing Professionals

Currently, agriculture value chain is driven by technical expertise. However, there is a lack of adequate Management knowledge and skills amongst the professionals. Therefore, Ikisan and XLRI, Jamshedpur have jointly developed an Agri Business Management Program for Agri-professionals and students. Ikisan provides the domain expertise while XLRI provides pedagogy.

This program is a combination of virtual learning and campus based module at XLRI, Jamshedpur. This program has been highly appreciated.

Key ITES Projects


Intellectual Property Rights for many software applications such as Field Manager, Vyapar, Mandi, Quick Solutions Systems, Management Time Table, Agri Information System and Agrecommerz belong to Ikisan. A significant recent development in this area is the introduction of Weather Based Crop Insurance. This entails setting up of Automatic Weather Stations, which provide dynamic village-level data essential for settlement of weather based insurance claims.

Key Central and State Government Projects Executed, Under Execution and Projects Under Development

    1. Agri-practices

    a) Technology Mission on Cotton covering 10 states wherein knowledge regarding advanced agricultural practices was given to cotton farmers using Touch Screen Kiosks, Interactive Voice Response Systems and Display Announcement System.

    b) National Agricultural innovation Project: in consortium mode with Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture from 2007 to 2012 wherein Ikisan was tasked with the development and deployment of ICT, Market Linkages and Agri Risk Management modules.

    c) 2009 to 2016: PSAMB ITES Project wherein Ikisan has successfully designed, developed, installed and commissioned an IT network of 57 mandis across the state. Currently in charge of operations and maintenance of the network.

    d) CDAC India development Gateway : This is an online information dissemination project by Government of India, which included Health, Education, Agriculture verticals Ikisan was appointed as a co-ordinating agency for the agri-vertical of this project.

    2. Procurement and Marketing: 2009 onwards

    a) TNSAMB: Regulated Market Modernization Project comprising of end to end automation of all activities across 20 markets including setting up the central server at the Head Office.

    b) PSAMB: eRecording Project comprising of design and development of software for data capture pertaining to arrivals, weighment and auction of agri produce

    c) e-NAM: National Agriculture Market (NAM) is a pan-India electronic trading portal which networks the existing APMC mandis to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities.

    3. Processing

    a) 2012 to 2017: Centre for Development of Advanced Computing has developed technology for quality measurement of agri produce. The agreement between CDAC and Ikisan for Transfer of Technology pertaining to these electronic sensors driven evaluation of tea and rice quality is underway. This offers immense benefits to the farming and trading community by way of establishing empirical quality standards.

    Despite initial bottlenecks the company has made significant inroads into the sector during past 2 years with unique offerings and competencies. Unlike pure IT companies that do not offer domain expertise, Ikisan adds significant domain value to the projects it undertakes and the clients it serves.